\u201cIt\u2019s a country full of talented people, \u201d Sony Pictures Television (SPT) Networks Asia\u2019s Virginia Lim said of the Philippines, where she has discovered Krissha Viaje, the Southeast Asian representative to the biannual talent search \u201cI Can Sing in Japanese.\u201d<\/b>
\nTOKYO\u2014\u201cIt\u2019s a country full of talented people, \u201d Sony Pictures Television (SPT) Networks Asia\u2019s Virginia Lim said of the Philippines, where she has discovered Krissha Viaje, the Southeast Asian representative to the biannual talent search \u201cI Can Sing in Japanese.\u201d
\u201cShe has the makings of a celebrity, that\u2019s why we chose her, \u201d added Lim, who is SVP and SPT head of content, production and marketing, and is also one of the judges in the first-ever Asia-wide search conducted in February in behalf of the program by the Asian entertainment channel Gem.
Krissha, who is popularly known in the Philippines as a member of the dance group GirlTrends, bested 11 other contestants during the preliminaries and will be competing in the grand finals tonight.
\u201cIn most of the shows I handle, the contestants from the Philippines always impress me, \u201d said Lim, pertaining to other popular SPT programs \u201cAmazing Race Asia\u201d and \u201cAsia\u2019s Got Talent\u201d where many Philippine representatives had emerged victorious.
\u201cKrissha\u2019s command of the Japanese language is very good, but it\u2019s really not how well you sing. It\u2019s how well you connect to the audience. She had the right emotions when she was performing, \u201d Lim shared with the Inquirer and other Southeast Asian journalists covering the competition here in Chiyoda.
Representatives from Argentina, Chile, Costa Rica, India, Indonesia, Jamaica, Norway, Peru, Puerto Rico and the United States were flown in to compete, said Yuji Gobuichi, the Japanese director and creator of the program.
Before \u201cI Can Sing in Japanese\u201d (ICSIJ) first aired here in 2011, Yuji said there were hardly any YouTube videos of non-Japanese singers performing Japanese songs. \u201cThere was even a time when it was difficult to get CDs of Japanese music. The contest helped change this, \u201d he declared.
\u201cMy dream is for the show to become a festival where representatives of all the 250 countries gather, \u201d he said.
ICSIJ will first air tonight at 6 p.m., and its encore will be on May 21,8: 30 p.m. Sony Gem is available on SkyCable in Metro Manila, Cebu, Davao, Bacolod, Iloilo and Baguio.<\/p>\n

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Sentiment rank: 1.7<\/div>\n

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